Ugh?

Grabbing the front of my cart Marigold pulls it along with her as she leaves me behind. I hurry to catch up, grabbing the handle and walking swiftly behind her. She leads me a few aisles over, her coworkers mostly ignoring her odd behavior, then stops suddenly in front of the florist corner.

“Skip the roses.” She says. “Sunflowers is the way to go. Or skip this stuff and just pick her some wild flowers. She hates the plains but she loves it too.”

“I’m sensing a theme.”

“Ha!” She snorts. “Ohhh, it’s so romantic. The suave Southern beau and wild prairie lily.” With a swooning sigh she grabs my cart and we were on our way again. “Come on.”

I follow along, listening and learning as Marigold dished out advice by the scoop. She was an odd one to be sure, charmingly eccentric, but not entirely unfamiliar. Though I’d never seen anybody this overt about it I had met best friends like this in the past. Shippers. Women whose romantic lives were lived vicariously through friends or fiction. Romance as a hobby. From the safety of arm’s length they could get a buzz off of the relationship highs without ever really putting any stakes on the table. Marigold was a benefit to be sure, I now knew I had someone rooting for me and whispering into Mei’s ear, but she was also a complication. Friends like this could become very…weird when things didn’t quite live up to their fantasies. And if things ever took a bad turn I had no doubt that Marigold would hunt me down to give me a piece of her mind. Even though she would only ever be on the periphery I knew that she and Mei were a package deal. Whether I liked it or not, Marigold had just entered the equation.

Had I been smart I would have just kept driving this morning. I didn’t need these types of complications in my life. Yet here I was, not smart and getting dumber by the minute. Normally I would have been lapping up her every word, loading every insight into my clip, but after getting burned trying to use ‘inside knowledge’ about Mei having a sibling this unearned advantage was starting to make my skin crawl. It just felt…wrong. Mei deserved better than that.

“Stop.” I say as she was about to go into Mei’s favorite dessert.

“Huh?”

Keeping my tone upbeat I wink at her. “You’re spoiling all the mystery.”

“Oh. Ohhhhh!” She nods and gives me a conspiratorial wink back. “Gotcha. She’s a woman of mystery. Ohhhh, this just keeps getting better!”

“Oh Lord.” Barb gripes playfully as she waddles up to us, completely misreading Marigold’s swooning. “This honey-tongued devil could talk his way into a nun’s britches.” She nudges me. “Don’t you ever stop?” My only answer is an impish grin.

Marigold laughs and snorts and even blushes a little. “Barb! Him and me!? HA! We weren’t flirting. Obviously!”

***

Later that evening, after my call home, I am standing in front of the antique shop smelling like tea tree and cedar and holding a bouquet of wild flowers I’d picked on my way here. While I had thought about ignoring what Marigold had told me in the end I thought that I’d be a fool to ignore it. If I was going to melt Mei’s icy armor I was going to need every advantage I had. I had to be my most charming, my most funny, my most irresistible. All the girls that had come and gone before suddenly felt like training for this moment. I almost hadn’t come at all but after mom telling me she was proud of me for staying and Ric making me feel like a champion with his indomitable hero worship of this VERY unworthy hero the urge to take a chance had become irresistible.

The sign on the door said ‘Closed’, which felt like a grim harbinger, but I take a deep breath, gather my courage and…

“What are you doing?”

“AH!” I startle and spin around to find Mei standing directly behind me! “What the…?” I glance around the wide open and empty street wondering where she had materialized from. Then I see the bag in her hand, a takeout bag from The Great Wall. Had she followed me here all the way from the motel without saying anything? Shit! If so she would have seen me picking flowers and smoothing my hair maybe even heard me testing out some lines I’d been practicing along the way.

With that signature blank expression of hers she quietly watches me get flustered and try to recover, making no attempt to make the moment less awkward. The fact that she had probably been following a block behind spoke to how distracted I had been on my way here as today she wore an elaborate layered gold and teal paisley skirt so long it covered her feet with a yellow collared blouse, blue tie around her neck, a vest in a lighter shade of blue and a wide brimmed straw sun hat. Behind her glasses her dark still eyes gave away nothing.

“Hey!” I say. “Just who I was looking for.”

“What luck. Finding me at my house.” She says, deadpan. Then, her tone somewhere between as statement and a question, she nods at the flowers and says. “Those are for me.”

“Oh, uh, yeah.” I hold them out.

“A thank you for the cards.” She says, causing me to wince. She had heard me testing lines after all. Why did I say them out loud!? GAH! This was so awkward. “You needn’t have bothered. I told you they were junk. You did me a favor taking them.”

“You’ve got sharp ears.”

“And you’ve got a big mouth.” She quips, still not taking the flowers. Leaning into me she sniffs and for the first time I get a hint of an emotion. That emotion being…disappointment. “You smell like my grandpa.”

Damn it, Marigold! With my usual glibness I shoot back. “You don’t like it?”

“I like it fine.” She says, waits a beat, then adds. “On Grandpa. Doesn’t suit you at all.”

“Yeah…well…” I stumble over my words only fall on my face by having no snappy comeback. What a fucking disaster!

Just as I am about to pull the flowers away she takes them from me. “I should get these into some water before they wilt.” She shoves her takeout back into my gut, forcing me to take it, then walks past me toward the house. “Come on.”

“Oh! Yeah.” I spin and hurry to catch up. Being invited in was good…wasn’t it? God, this woman had me completely off my game. As I follow I admire the sway of her wide hips and regroup. “Lovely evening.”

“Is it?” She stops at he door, keys in her hand, and look out over the waving grasslands glowing a golden hue in the evening light under a amber sky that stretched on to forever. After a beat she says. “I suppose it is.”

We enter the shop. Mei leaves me in the entry way, the still hot paper bag warming my hands, as she pulls a random vase off of a shelf that had a dozen of them then ducks into the washroom to fill it water. Walking back out she places the flowers in the vase and sets it down on a table. She arranges the bouquet, picking out a bloom that had passed its best, then does a bit of arranging before finally turning to me.

She looks me up and down, noting my clean jeans, crisp red collared shirt and freshly shaved face. “Ugh!”

“Ugh?”

“You’re all dressed up. Flowers.” She sighs wearily. “You’re about to ask me on a date, aren’t you?”

I sputter a moment as she cuts me off at the knees. “Sometimes a gentleman just wants to look his best.”

“If I meet one I’ll ask him.” She says flatly. “As you can see I’ve already got my dinner.” I open my mouth to say something when she says. “Fine! I can put this in the fridge for leftovers tomorrow, I suppose. Never as good cold. But it would be rude to have you get all dressed up then send you away. You can take me to The Post for pizza.” She takes the bag from me. “But I choose the pizza and we’re splitting the bill. And it’s not a date.”

“The Po…wait. Now? You want to go now!?” I’d come in hopes of seeing her again on the weekend, not now!

She pauses as she goes to turn away from me, looking at me quizzically. “You’re not hungry?”

“No. No! I mean, yes! I mean…” I laugh. “I just…I thought…” I take a deep breath and start again. “I mean, yes. Pizza sounds awesome.”

That frosty expression of hers…thaws, just a little. “Give me a minute, Dusty.”

“Sure, Mei.” I smile.

Taking her bag of food she climbs the stairs leaving me in the entry way with my head spinning. As my brain catches up with my body I am struck with the fact that I was going on a non-date date…with Mei…tonight. When did that all happen? HOW did that all happen? I hadn’t even gotten my charm flowing. No schmoozing, no flirting, no quips or compliments, just me stammering while she grabbed the reins from my hands and took over. I look at the happy little bouquet sitting in its vase about ten feet away and wonder what I had just gotten myself into.